Are you ready to take your online and/or brick-and-mortar store to the next level? You don’t need to invest thousands in a fancy new app or program; in fact, you probably already have the solution right in front of you. It’s your point of sale (POS) system!
More than at first glance.
On the surface, your POS system is a highly efficient and secure payment processing unit that uses hardware such as tablets, barcode scanners, and receipt printers in combination with the suite of POS software that runs the entire operation. Your POS solution is likely equipped to accept numerous forms of payment, even including cryptocurrency and international denominations if you so desire, and to do so in a way that safeguards your customers’ sensitive information in accordance with data security standards. Thanks to the advent of near-field communication (NFC) technology, it can even conduct touchless transactions, a feature that has proven particularly popular over the past few years.
These features alone would be enough to make today’s POS systems invaluable assets to your business. However, that is just the beginning of what they can accomplish for you.
Your silent human resources manager.
Staffing issues can swallow up inordinate amounts of your time and energy. Although many issues will always require the intelligence and attention of human beings — interpersonal conflicts, job interviews, performance discussions, etc.), there are other facets of human resources that you can hand over to a smart POS system. They’re perfectly equipped to keep accurate track of employee hours, vacations, tips, and overtime. In addition, you can rely on it to automatically email schedules to everyone at a set date and time. If you’re using a cloud-based POS system, you’ll even have the ability to make changes in real time from wherever you are.
Beyond time tracking, today’s POS systems are masters at crunching data and that includes performance metrics. With just a few clicks, you can pull up details relating to individual staff: their sales numbers, what products they excelled at bringing to customers, and where they are struggling. Once you have this data in hand, you can make intelligent decisions about what to do next: reward excellence, provide training to address weak points, or perhaps even delegate responsibilities differently in order to focus on both increased sales and higher worker morale.
Your automated financial assistant.
With its built-in database and reporting functions, your POS system should also give you the ability to manage your customers while simultaneously offering them the personalized shopping experience they are demanding. Behind the scenes, the system should be a workhorse when it comes to bookkeeping. That’s because it can integrate seamlessly with your accounting software, communicating details about products and expenditures that can seamlessly flow into your payroll and bookkeeping systems with only the minimum of effort from you.
If you were to identify the source of the biggest financial headaches in your business, you would probably point right to invoicing. Especially if you are still doing your billing and customer communications by hand, this can eat up your resources. But with your POS system on the case, it can take over tasks such as keeping track of payment deadlines, sending out late payment notices, and monitoring when recurring payment accounts are due to expire. That leaves you and your staff with the time to address those jobs that only humans can do, things like interacting with customers and negotiating prices with vendors.
In many ways, your POS system should become at least as valuable as a human staff member. Always available and ready to do your bidding, it should be fully equipped to help you manage your customers, stay on top of staffing issues, and keep your financial house in order. There is no time like the present to elevate your business by taking full advantage of everything your POS software and hardware can do for your entire operations.
